100 years ago: The potato joins the huns

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A paradox on the Brobdingnagian efforts America and her allies are making to make the world safe for democracy is the way those mighty efforts are lifting a lot of humble products into the realms of autocracy. Take, for example, the potato, for centuries the most democratic democrat of them all.

Announcement comes from Yakima, which is the potato heaven of the northwest, that the growers have agreed upon a price of $40 a ton this year for the tubers — a price, by the way, which is not much more than double the prices of peace time, at which the potato cultivator always made fairly good money. C’est la guerre, of course.

The grand champion of democracy — the product that adorned the table of patrician and plebeian alike — now takes unto itself the attributes of greatness, the pomp and circumstance of royalty. Some things are born great, others acquire greatness and a few have greatness thrust upon them — as for instance, the potato.

From the bourgeoisie “spud in jacket” to the aristocratic “great big baked,” recently deposed by food administration edict, the all-essential tuber has undoubtedly been the makings of a nation. The present tendency of the market gives rise to the fear that it may yet be the finish of a nation.